Stage Your House to Sell

If you're thinking of selling your house, think about staging it first.

By FamilyTime

The spring real estate season is a busy one. Sellers eagerly put their houses on the market, usually with the help of a real estate agent, and then hope that they will get the price they ask.

While not new to the real estate market, staging a house to help it sell is concept many homeowners (and their agents) may never have heard of. It's a step to take before the house goes on the market, or when it has languished without selling.

What is Staging?Staging is a method of marketing the house. It is as instrumental as open houses and online and newspaper advertisements.

When you stage your home, you turn the house into a product that will appeal to the most potential buyers. This means taking a lot of yourself out of the rooms, as well as removing clutter and anything that might distract the buyer.

How Do You Stage?Homeowners can hire professional stagers, who will work with them to prepare the house, or they can do it themselves.

Staging is not the same as decorating. When you decorate, you imprint your style and taste on your house. When you stage, you depersonalize it so that the largest number of buyers can envision themselves living in those rooms.

The key to staging is to remove any extraneous furniture, artwork, books, and other items from the rooms. This includes getting rid of clutter.

It's important to clean the house top to bottom and to get rid of any odors that may be offputting to buyers.

While you don't need to spend a lot of money when you stage, depending on the state of the home, you might consider painting over a vivid color, replacing tattered carpeting, or sprucing up the bathroom with a new floor or fixtures.

Smaller changes that make big impressions are fresh shower curtains, new bedspreads, clutter-free kitchen counters, and new light bulbs in every fixture.

The outside of the home should be staged, as well. Trim shrubbery, keep garden beds neat, and get rid of old or broken outdoor toys and furniture.

Why Stage?Homeowners who stage their houses say they sell faster than they ever expected. Professional stagers agree, and report that a well staged house sometimes may sell for more than the asking price!

A staged home is not simply a house that has been cleaned and tidied. It's a house that has been arranged to appear spacious, clean, and inviting so that it welcomes anyone entering it warmly but does not trumpet the personality of the seller.